When asked about these awards and the future of COSMIC2, Cianfrocco said, “The support we received from SGCI and XSEDE helped us get off the ground and, ultimately, to get funded. Because of my work with SGCI and what I learned from attending the Gateways 2017 conference, I’m already thinking about long-term sustainability and how to keep COSMIC2 running when our grants come to an end.”

Cianfrocco’s goal is to make COSMIC2 the first stop for anyone new to cryo-EM, and a continued resource for seasoned users who need to be able to analyze data as efficiently and accurately as possible. By providing easy access to structural biologists who need the platform but aren’t necessarily familiar with the HPC tools needed to process data, Cianfrocco is aiming to break down barriers with this gateway, which has the potential to make a transformative impact in the field of structural biology.

With his eyes set on developing an easy-to-use science gateway that will interface with HPC resources, data processing algorithms, and long-term data storage options, the new rounds of funding will allow Cianfrocco to hire the staff, faculty, and developers needed to turn the prototype developed with SGCI support into a fully-developed gateway.

Some goals for the growth of COSMIC2 include:

Providing a large pool of computing time for cryo-EM users through an XSEDE allocation

More than just everyday musings...

This project is funded by the National Science Foundation under award number ACI-1547611. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.